The ending of The Shining, particularly the photo of Jack in the 1921 ballroom, suggests that Jack is a reincarnation of a former hotel employee, although this explanation is not explicitly stated in the film.
Moreover, the most dominant types of schizophrenia that Jack Torrance experienced is paranoid schizophrenia since he showed so many hallucinations, emotional, and serious expression in the movie.
What mental illness does Jack have in The Shining?
The story presented Jack Torrance as a man who dislikes authority. He moved to an isolated hotel with his wife and his son in Colorado over the winter, hoping to improve and cure his poor writing. As the days passed, he began showing the symptoms of schizophrenia and attempted to kill his family.
In the book, it's more clear that the hotel exploits Jack's flaws and possess him into committing the acts that he does, while in the movie the hotel merely pushes Jack into becoming the monster that was always inside of him. A similar idea, just executed differently in the different versions of the story.
Two different Jacks! This theory explains The Shining!
Why did Jack go crazy in The Shining?
The family has to care for the hotel for the winter, but they cannot leave the mountainous area. In this isolation every day becomes the same for Jack as his writer's block becomes quotidian. The combination of isolation, monotony, creative frustration, and supernatural forces extract Jack's insanity.
Moments later, he would improvise the “Here's Johnny!” line, which was a reference to the intro of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Interestingly, Kubrick originally shot the scene with a fake door, but Nicholson – who once trained as a fire marshal – chopped it down too quickly.
Soon, after a winter storm leaves the family snowbound, the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel influence Jack's sanity, leaving his wife and son in grave danger.
The ending of The Shining, particularly the photo of Jack in the 1921 ballroom, suggests that Jack is a reincarnation of a former hotel employee, although this explanation is not explicitly stated in the film. The Shining explores themes of cyclical violence and abuse, and Kubrick's film is full...
The character of Jack illustrates the connection between alcoholism and abuse and simultaneously underscores the potentially devastating effects of isolation on mental health. Most of all, Jack represents the profound connection of family, which King implies can't be easily broken, by supernatural means or otherwise.
We identified in previous chapters that Jack strangled Danny in the fatherly love scene and with these new details it would seem that he also sexually abused his son during this event.
The woman in King's novel is Lorraine Massey, who used to seduce bellboys and engage in sexual acts with them. Lorraine was the wife of a prominent New York lawyer, but during her stay at the Overlook, she was with a younger man.
Once you realize that Jack has been absolutely bonkers long before taking the job as the caretaker for an isolated hotel, everything the man does in the film starts to make more sense, and his end becomes an inevitability instead of a tragedy10. Jack's subtly crazy presence also serves to “other” him.
After a corpse tries to strangle Danny in the infamous room 217 and Wendy and Jack see the resulting bruise on their son's neck, Wendy accuses Jack of abusing Danny.
In the novel, Jack gets redemption and burns the Overlook Hotel down; in the 1980 film, Jack doesn't get redemption, he simply freezes to death in the hedge maze while attempting to kill his son Danny, dying as a monster.
As such, Grady has always been the butler, just as Jack has always been the caretaker insofar as they were both imprisoned in the future by the hotel, and their spirits became anachronistically part of history.
The hotel wants Danny dead so that it can absorb his “shining” ability to add to the Overlook's plethora of dark energies, so it possesses Jack in his vulnerable state to try to kill Danny.
By 2011, Dan has become an alcoholic to suppress his abilities. After moving to a New Hampshire town, Dan recovers through Alcoholics Anonymous. Working as a hospice orderly, Dan uses his shining to comfort dying patients, earning the nickname "Doctor Sleep".
The Shining: Danny's Imaginary Friend Tony Is Danny's Future Self. Near the end of Stephen King's The Shining book, it's revealed that Tony is actually Danny Torrance's future adult self. It's also revealed that Danny's middle name is Anthony, explaining why exactly Tony is called that.
Jack also exhibits negative symptoms of Schizophrenia, notably avolition, which involves a profound lack of motivation to complete even simple daily tasks. His inability to make progress on his writing, despite having the time and solitude, is a glaring example.
The Shining is partially based on a true story, as the supernatural elements of Jack Torrance's stay at the Overlook Hotel are inspired by a real haunting in Colorado and the Stanley Hotel where King stayed.
